


Sucker Punch

by UniverseNil



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Antenna, CatCo Worldwide Media, Endgame Kara Danvers/Lena Luthor, Energy Weapon, F/F, James Clerk Maxwell - Freeform, L-Corp (Supergirl TV 2015), Lena Luthor Finds Out Kara Danvers is Supergirl, Project Cadmus, Seismic Retrofit, Sneak Attack, Soccer, SuperCorp, The DEO | Department of Extra-Normal Operations, Worst Friend Ever, gelato, triangulation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-11-04
Packaged: 2020-12-14 06:35:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 10,064
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21011360
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UniverseNil/pseuds/UniverseNil
Summary: When Supergirl is struck suddenly by an unknown weapon, the evidence pointing to Lena Luthor keeps adding up until even Kara Danvers can’t ignore it.





	1. Swatted Like a Fly

One moment, Kara Danvers was enjoying a quadruple-scoop gelato and a beautiful autumn day. The next, she found herself face down in a pile of garbage halfway down the block. 

“What the… _eww!_” 

She scrambled away from a leaking bag of mystery substance. It had clearly started foul and then marinated in the sun for days to achieve its current eyewatering funk. Something crunched under her left knee and began to ooze. 

Footsteps thundered in her direction as a passerby rushed to her aid. “Ma’am! Ma’am, are you OK? Don’t try to move. You must’ve flown fifty feet!” 

Kara froze. _Humans probably emerge from this sort of thing seriously harmed, don’t they? Shoot…_ She considered feigning an injury, but the dirty diapers half an inch from her left hand quickly took that option off the table. 

“I think I’m fine,” she called back. “Luckily, I landed on something soft.” _Definitely lucky_. _If I’d hit something hard, I’d’ve had some explaining to do when I left a Supergirl-shaped hole in it…_

The man skidded to a halt next to her, gently supporting her by the elbow as she rose to her feet. “Ma’am, you could be in shock… You could have a spinal injury!” He was frantic. “Do you want me to call an ambulance?” Her would-be savior had a wiry build and his light brown hair was receding slightly. His eyes were wide with astonishment, and his face was kind. He was wheezing from the exertion of his sprint, holding his left hand to his chest as he caught his breath. 

“No thanks!” She flashed her most charismatic smile, hoping it came off more reassuring than manic. The unknown substance she could feel dripping down the right side of her face was definitely putting its thumb on the “manic” side of the scale. She dug a napkin out of her pocket and swiped at her cheek. “My sister is a doctor, so I can have her take a look.” 

“Well, if you’re sure…” He was still gasping slightly; Kara felt terrible for putting the stranger through all this stress. Not for the first time, she cursed the peculiarities of the human bystander impulse. _Jeez, if I’d been on a busier street everyone would have probably ignored the whole thing…_

She cranked up the wattage on her smile, since it seemed to be working. “I’m sure! Thanks so much for checking on me though!” 

He obviously wasn’t totally convinced. But she was visibly unharmed, excluding her dignity, even after the initial shock would have started to wear off. So, after a few more thank yous and assurances, he shuffled on down the block and, after one more backwards glance, around the corner. 

Kara let out a sigh of relief when he finally disappeared from view. _That’s one problem solved, at least._

She certainly approved of the citizens of National City helping one another _in general_ ; in fact she encouraged it. She just had a teeny tiny exception in the specific case of perfectly-intact alien superheroes hoping to keep their secret identities under wraps so that their special agent sisters wouldn’t lose their freaking minds. The last time she’d had a very close call, Alex had threatened to clip her hair into a flattop and ship her off to Iceland for a year, and Maggie wasn’t around anymore to stop her from carrying through. 

Now she just had to figure out what could (a) sneak up on a Kryptonian and (b) hit them so hard. 

No one else was in the area, even after double-checking with her X-ray vision and superhearing. This was an industrial part of town, with old brick warehouses lining the roadway on both sides. The loading bays were along the major thoroughfares one block over on either side, making the traffic minimal along the street where the attack had taken place. Scanning the sidewalk for clues yielded only one item of interest: the crushed remains of her dessert. 

“Oh shoot,” she said to herself. “My gelato!” 

*** 

Kara ducked into a nearby alley and whirled into her Supersuit. Within five minutes of texting Alex, the street was cordoned off and milling with DEO agents. Teams scoured the asphalt for physical evidence, and scanned every surface for weapons residue. 

Supergirl’s contribution, after relating the prior events, was the cheerful consumption of a replacement gelato. 

“You sure you’re doing OK, Kar?” Alex inquired quietly. 

Kara rolled her eyes. “For the tenth time, Agent Worrywart, yes, I swear, I’m perfectly fine.” 

“That’s _Acting Director_ Worrywart for a few more hours, dummy.” 

Alex gave her sister one last anxious look, then took a deep breath and refocused on her job. Kara was right: worrying wouldn’t keep Supergirl safe, but a scrupulous investigation might. 

“Any luck, Agent Swift?” she asked as the Tech Team lead jogged over. 

“We’re not finding anything, Acting Director Danvers,” he admitted. “No evidence of conventional weapons, no energy signatures matching our alien weapons databases, and nothing that Agent Schott’s machine learning algorithm even suspects might be an unknown one.” 

“Well, something hit Supergirl hard enough to send her flying!” Alex combed her fingers through her hair angrily. “If it wasn’t a weapon, is there any other evidence of alien activity?” 

“The only alien DNA we detected was Kryptonian, and that all matched to Supergirl. It’s not conclusive though. Not every alien sheds much DNA, and there are plenty of gaps in our database. Without a reference sample, it’s hard to know if we have an alien DNA fragment, a bacterial DNA fragment, or some non-DNA form of genetic material that we don’t even know to look for.” 

“Well, keep looking.” 

Agent Swift saluted and trotted off to resume his efforts. 

“Acting Director Danvers!” came a sudden shout from a nearby alcove. 

Alex and Kara exchanged looks and ran toward the sound, where they found a familiar DEO agent wrestling with a dumpster. 

“What do you have to report, Agent Vasquez?” 

“I found this, embedded in the wall. I don’t know what it is, but it doesn’t look like it belongs there!” 

She stepped aside, and Alex peered at the device. It was two feet square, with a pulsing light in the corner. Someone had knocked out bricks and embedded it flush with the wall, then hidden it behind an old piece of plywood and a dumpster. 

“They took advantage of the earthquake retrofit — the brick was structural back when these places were built, but it’s just a facade now. See the steel framing behind it? All these buildings were grandfathered in to the old earthquake code, but two years ago the city made the owners fix them up or tear them down.” 

Vasquez flicked on her flashlight and aimed it through the gaps in the wall. “Look, they hooked into the building power mains there, and there.” 

“So we’re looking for someone who’d know that bit of architectural trivia, and who would have the expertise to design this thing and rig it up to a live electrical system?” Alex asked. 

“Sure seems like, ma’am.” 

“Agent Swift!” Alex called. “Have your team figure out what the hell this thing is. Don’t disturb it in any way. If they don’t already know we’ve found it, let’s not give them a heads up until we’re ready.” 

“Yes, ma’am!” 

*** 

Back at the DEO, James and Winn were engaged in a lively round of paper football. Winn was carefully lining up his next shot when Alex flicked him in the back of the head. 

“Touchdown, Agent Schott.” 

“_Ow!_ What the hel— _Oh!_ Agent Alex, er, Acting Director Danvers! Uh… how can I help you?” 

James’s amusement at Winn’s panic turned to disgust as he caught a whiff of Kara’s new _eau de garbage_ fragrance. He wrinkled his nose, eliciting a mournful look from the superhero. 

“You can help me by paying attention to DEO alert bulletins instead of goofing off.” Alex scowled at him for several seconds, then brought up a file on the main monitor using her tablet. 

“An unknown entity or group launched a surprise attack on Supergirl an hour ago. She was unhurt, but whatever it was sent her flying. We located an unidentified device nearby. Agents Vasquez and Swift are sending over higher-res photos and scans, so let us know what you can find out. We’re skipping the more invasive scans for now so we don’t tip our hands if the thing is monitored.” 

“Got it!” He turned to his workstation and started pulling data down for analysis. 

“What else do you know so far?” James asked. “Takes a lot to knock a Kryptonian over, even with the element of surprise.” 

“It was a pretty effective surprise,” Kara grumbled. Despite being uninjured, her pride had suffered a metaphorical black eye. She was also anxious about the garbage odor and itching for a shower. 

“Whoever placed it knew exactly where they could put it surreptitiously and had the technical ability to do so. And it was placed sometime within the last two years, since it wasn’t discovered during a building retrofit. We have researchers pinning down the exact date range.” 

“James,” Kara interjected, “I’m going to clean up and then head out on patrol. Maybe Guardian might want to do the same, see if you hear any interesting chatter on the streets?” 

“Sounds like a plan,” he agreed. “I’ll take the north side, and you take the south side of the city?” 

“Works for me!” 

*** 

Kara had made several passes across the National City skyline over the last hour, but hadn't noticed anything out of the ordinary. If anything, it was unusually quiet. 

She had also made a quick loop around the L-Corp building, but Lena was hard at work and Kara didn’t really have a good excuse to interrupt her as Supergirl this evening. No matter how much her heart fluttered at the thought. She watched her friend work for one last long moment, then shook her head to clear it and resumed her patrol. 

She had left her DEO comm dangling from her ear, so as to not distract her superhearing from anything suspicious in the city below. Nothing being apparent, she popped the earpiece back in. 

“Anything on your end, Guardian?” 

“Zilch! I scared off a mugger, so that was fun, but pretty boring for a National City evening, Supergirl,” James radioed back. 

“Me either, though at least the sunset is pretty, so it’s not a total loss! I think I’m going to head— _oof!_” 

Out of nowhere, Kara found herself somersaulting through the air, totally out of control. Her first thought was that she’d been clipped by a passenger jet, but as she caught her bearings and came out of the tumble, she realized she was alone in the sky. 

“Supergirl! Supergirl! Come in! Are you alright?” James sounded frantic. 

“I’m fine,” she assured him, as her heart rate calmed. 

Her suit’s biometric sensors must have triggered an emergency alert, because Alex was on the comms just a moment later. 

“Supergirl, Guardian, what’s your status?” 

“Alex, uh, Acting Director Danvers, same thing happened again. But there’s nothing in the sky for a mile right now in any direction.” She scanned the horizon once more to make sure. “It was like I was slugged by Godzilla,” she grumbled. “Does the DEO database have anything about invisible Godzillas.” 

“Supergirl, I want to see you in the DEO med bay ASAP.” Alex pointedly ignored Kara’s hypothesis. 

“Not the time for Godzilla jokes?” 

“_Definitely_ not the time for Godzilla jokes, Supergirl.” 

*** 

Alex’s medical team had given Kara a thorough exam, but there didn’t seem to be any aftereffects from the attacks. 

“I told you I was fine, Alex,” Kara complained as she dropped the Kryptonite-laced blood pressure cuff back into its lead case. Superheroes were _not_ supposed to get swatted out of the sky like houseflies, and being sent to medical was adding insult to injury. 

“And I didn’t want to face mom at Thanksgiving dinner if I didn’t check, thank you very much,” Alex retorted. “Anyhow, I just heard over the comms that J’onn is back. Let’s get him looped in.” 

*** 

After Alex brought J’onn up to speed, he turned to Kara. “Supergirl, walk me through the first incident again, in your own words?” 

“Sure!” Kara agreed. She gave him the descriptive version of Alex’s efficient bullet points. “The worst part was that some guy saw the whole thing and tried to _rescue_ me,” she concluded. “He was so sweet! I was afraid I’d never manage to shoo him away without him calling an ambulance, and how awkward would _that_ have been!” 

“Wait,” Alex interrupted. She pinched the bridge of her nose for a moment and took a deep breath. “You were struck from behind by a mystery weapon, there was someone _behind_ you, and you… _shooed him away?_ At best he was an important witness, and at worst—” Alex cut off suddenly and began poking furiously at her tablet. 

“Well, they’ve been showing those Supergirl PSAs lately, you know? The ones where I encourage all good citizens to come to one anothers’ aid? Don’t be a bystander, et cetera?” Kara twisted at her cape anxiously and looked to J’onn for backup. He quirked a disbelieving eyebrow at her. 

Alex found what she was looking for and turned the screen towards Kara. “We recently intercepted a Cadmus personnel manifest. Any of these creeps look familiar?” She paged through the photos. At the sixth one, Kara winced. 

“I’m guessing that’s your ‘nice guy,’ Supergirl?” Alex fixed her with the full Agent Danvers Glare. 

“He seemed nice at the time?” she tried. 

Alex continued glaring. 

“Could’ve happened to any of us?” 

This also proved unsatisfactory. _Does Alex have Kryptonite contact lenses?_ Kara wondered nervously, and not for the first time. 

“Eliza always encouraged us to see the best in people?” she tried sheepishly. 

Somehow Doctor Doctor Special Agent Alexandra Danvers could even roll her eyes like a badass. 

**** 


	2. From Bad To Worse

“Agent Schott!” Alex leaned out of the doorway of J’onn’s office and summoned Winn. 

“What’s up?” 

“One of the guys from the Cadmus manifest was within striking range of Supergirl when she was attacked earlier. I need you to scan every bit of security camera footage you can get your hands on from the last month and find out if he’s the only one, or if they’ve been tailing her for a while now.” 

Winn blanched. “I will get right on that!” he exclaimed as he scampered back to his workstation. 

*** 

Two hours of video analysis later, and they had the grim news: plainclothes Cadmus operatives had been tailing ace reporter Kara Danvers for the last seventeen days. 

“Agent Schott, have we been able to determine conclusively whether this is related to Kara’s reporting work, or to her work as Supergirl?” J’onn inquired. 

“I had agents on the Supergirl-need-to-know list review the footage, and she never used her powers in front of them. I had three sets of eyes review each clip to cross-check. They seemed to be just… following her. The most unusual thing they witnessed was the, uh, binge eating.” He smiled at Kara apologetically. 

“However, the Good Samaritan from the first attack was caught on loading dock security feeds, and after turning the corner he stopped immediately to place a call. We assume he was making a test run of the weapon. The ‘good citizen’ act was most likely a ploy to assess the extent of Supergirl’s injuries.” 

“Can we trace that call?” 

“It was placed over the cellular _data_ network, not a regular phone call, so we know which cell tower he was using, but not who he contacted. Not super useful here since we know where he was anyway, but we’re monitoring local cell towers for any pings from the same phone.” 

“Thank you, Agent Schott. Good work. Where are we on the identification of that mystery device in the wall near the first incident? Any progress there?” 

“Negative. Whatever it is, it appears to be a passive device. There’s no way to know anything from this single unit unless we catch it in operation.” 

“Alright, Agent Danvers, have plainclothes DEO teams search the city for any more of these devices. Start in the area where Supergirl was struck the second time.” 

Alex nodded and tapped at her tablet to relay the order. 

“I can help!” Kara interjected. 

“Supergirl, you have been attacked from out of the blue twice now. You are off patrol until we get a handle on this.” 

“Nooo!” she protested. “Whatever it is hasn’t hurt me--” 

“Yet!” Alex interjected. 

Kara barreled along with her argument. “Like I said, it hasn’t hurt me, so I don’t see why--" 

“Supergirl, your safety is the highest priority here.” J’onn crossed his arms. 

“But—” 

“The _highest_ priority.” 

She mustered up her most sorrowful expression, but neither Alex nor J’onn were moved. She gave Winn an imploring look, but he took one look at Alex and hunkered down at his workstation. 

“Ugh,” she grumbled. “Guess I’m off duty.” 

*** 

Kara was back in her buttondown and khakis, walking the streets of National City. They might be able to take Supergirl off duty, but Alex and J’onn certainly weren’t the boss of Kara Danvers, Ace Reporter. It was a less convenient way to patrol the rougher neighborhoods, however, since she had to stay on foot and dodge late-evening creepers with plausibly human methods. 

Luckily most of them were a few drinks in, so she could push the boundaries of plausibility. Plus, she’d found that creepers weren’t about to run off to the news and admit that a girl had beaten them up, if it came to that. 

She made it back to the site of the first incident, hoping to find something Alex’s agents had missed and use it to get back onto active duty. The team had finished up hours ago, and the street was nearly empty. 

Two homeless men were playing cards near the alcove. As she got closer, one of them nodded at her. Her heart sank as she recognized them as undercover DEO agents, there to guard the device. Worse yet, they were on the Supergirl need-to-know list. 

Which meant Alex already knew Kara was there, and raised the stakes on her bout of insubordination. She _definitely_ had to figure something out now, or she was going to be reorganizing the card catalog at the Fortress of Solitude for the next six months. 

On the plus side, if they knew who she was, at least they wouldn’t try to stop her. 

After making sure it really was just her and the DEO agents, she crossed her fingers and lowered her glasses. The warehouse itself was utterly ordinary; their stock in trade seemed to be car parts. She could see the exterior brick, a steel frame from the retrofit, and an intact layer of drywall beyond that. No one working there would have come across the device unless they’d taken the drywall down. 

As her X-ray vision panned to the device itself, the view suddenly flickered. Instead of car parts, she found herself looking at… tiny plumbing fixtures? She pushed her glasses up her nose and pondered that for a moment. She lowered them again and took another scan. Not tiny plumbing fixtures; _distant_ ones. Mufflers, alternators, wheel bearings, and then when she tried to scan through the device, it was suddenly toilets and U-traps. 

She peered across the way, and found the answer staring her in the face. National City Plumbing Supply was across the street and a couple buildings down. The device was a signal reflector sophisticated enough that it even affected her X-ray vision. If they could locate additional reflectors around the city, maybe they could triangulate the source of the signal and figure out who was controlling the weapon. 

That was more than enough to get Supergirl back on active duty. 

*** 

Kara spun into her Supersuit and was airborne. 

Her comms crackled in her ear. “Supergirl, I seem to recall you were off duty?” an annoyed Alex inquired. 

“Agent Danvers, I figured out what that device does and I’m headed back to the DEO. It’s some kind of reflector.” She gave Alex the lowdown. 

“Copy that.” Alex was all business now. “Meet us in the main conference room to debrief when you get here. I’ll get a team assembled.” 

“Sounds like a plan!” 

Kara was about 45 seconds out from the DEO when something on the ground caught her eye. A group of men were clustered near a brick utility building in the downtown park; two of them appeared to be keeping watch for the others. National City never entirely slept, but the activity in a remote corner of the park was unusual given the hour. 

She swooped toward the group of shadowy figures, sure she’d have plenty of time to deal with their nonsense and still make it back to the DEO before Alex could herd everyone into the briefing room. 

As she approached, one of the guards noticed and pointed at her, triggering chaos on the ground. Guns were pulled from holsters, and a couple of the men were foolish enough to try firing. She swatted the bullets away. Her quick detour was going to take longer than expected if she had to haul these guys off to NCPD. _Oh well_, she thought, _they can’t start the debrief without Supergirl, and I can live through Alex’s lecture about person-hours one more time._

Then the actual attack came. This time it wasn’t just like a punch in the gut; suddenly every molecule of her body was on fire. She was simultaneously being compressed to a single point in space, and pulled apart in an infinite number of directions. Kara opened her mouth to scream, but the air was forced out of her lungs and her jaw muscles clenched, slamming her teeth together with an audible clack. 

“Supergirl, please come in. Your biometric sensors have spiked,” came over her comms, but she couldn’t answer. Everything was spinning and the ground was suddenly much closer than it had been. She had, by this point, overshot the squabbling men by several hundred feet. 

The comms crackled in her ear again. “Supergirl, I repeat, your biometrics are off the chart and we show you rapidly losing altitude. Please report. A team is being dispatched to your last known location.” 

Still spinning out of control, muscles tensed nearly hard enough to tear ligament from bone, Kara crashed into the park, plowing a furrow into the soccer fields. 

As she slowed to a halt, she realized she could finally breathe again, though parts of her suit were smoking and charred. She gathered her wits, and hauled herself out of the impromptu ditch. She scanned the area and saw a glint of light near a stand of trees. 

She took off, risking the turbulence of close-to-ground flight to ensure she got to that glint before the person could flee. She tackled them, half expecting it to be a curious citizen she’d end up apologizing to, but once she had subdued the person, a familiar face was revealed. 

She was staring into the eyes of her “good citizen” from the first attack. 

He was grasping a small electronic device in his left hand, and before she could react, he used it to trigger the weapon, incapacitating her once more. He seized the opportunity to flee as her comms blared in her ear again. She had just enough awareness to recognize the familiar thump of DEO boots racing toward her as she lost consciousness. 

*** 

After another trip through the med bay and emergency takeout courtesy of James, Supergirl joined the team assembled in the conference room. The latest attack had sent her into a solar flare, and J’onn had really taken her off active duty this time. 

“Agent Danvers tells me that our agents located a second reflector partially installed in the maintenance building below the site of the most recent attack. Supergirl must have interrupted them in the act. That building was another recent earthquake retrofit, and after restricting our search to that subset of structures, three more were found near the site of the most recent attack. 

“The operatives appeared to be in possession of a signal initiator that can control the weapon. Supergirl, you’re fortunate these operatives were uninterested in taking you prisoner.” 

J’onn looked directly at Kara as he said the last few words. She lowered her chopsticks and grimaced slightly. J’onn had an impressive ability to convey disapproval of her off-the-books schemes without the slightest change in his voice or shift in his facial expression. Plus, she was still smarting from her sister’s fifteen minute lecture; the word “reckless” had featured prominently. 

To make matters worse, Kara’s suit was still smoldering slightly. She was going to have to grab her spare from Alex’s office after the debrief. Which would probably involve round two of that lecture… She resumed shoveling lo mein into her mouth. 

“The fact that you’re safe suggests that these operatives are functioning as a small guerrilla group without the capacity to detain a superpowered prisoner,” he continued. “Our technical analysts inform me that the severity of this latest attack was likely due to your being caught in multiple beams this time. Agent Schott, would you walk us through what we’ve learned about these devices?” 

“Uh,” Winn scrambled to his feet, knocking some of his papers off the DEO conference table. He gave Kara a anxious glance. “Um, yes! I can do that. They’re a network of mostly-passive reflector / antenna units. They receive and redirect a signal, with some added processing to reduce noise and amplify it, hence the electrical tie-in. 

“In this case, it’s a signal that works in opposition to the photonucleic effect of Earth’s yellow sun. One beam sends a Kryptonian reeling. Two or more try to propel a Kryptonian in multiple directions at once. On a molecular level. The upshot of your powers being knocked mostly offline is that it probably can’t affect you in this state, Supergirl.” 

_Aaand I guess that’s why Alex doesn’t have me under the sunlamps with half the DEO assigned to keeping me there. Finally a bright spot in the day,_ Kara thought. _It’ll probably turn out to be an oncoming train, but what can you do?_

“It’s very unusual that they’re made of a material able to reflect Kara’s X-ray vision. As we know, Kryptonian X-ray vision isn’t actually an X-ray as conventionally understood in the context of Maxwell’s electromagnetic spectrum…” 

“Veering off topic, Agent Schott,” J’onn rumbled. 

Winn hesitated before resuming. “Uh, the positioning of the reflectors discovered so far was sufficient to triangulate the source of the signal, and we were able to validate that analysis by monitoring their behavior during the most recent transmission. We still don’t entirely know what information it contains, or what secondary devices each receiver might trigger, but, uh, we do have conclusive analysis proving its source.” 

He paused, and gave Kara an apologetic look. Her eyebrows crinkled. _What on earth is he so nervous about?_

“Agent Schott?” J’onn prompted again. 

Winn took a breath and continued. “The signal is originating from the L-Corp antenna.” 

**** 


	3. Soccer Moms and Atom Bombs

“It’s not Lena!” Kara insisted. 

“Kara…” After an initial outburst, Alex had hauled her sister into a side room, and had spent the last five minutes trying to calm her down. 

“It’s _not_ Lena! You guys all swore you’d gotten past the whole Luthor thing, Alex! She’s helped us out and saved our butts over and over! But the second you think you can pin something on her, that’s all out the window again—” 

“Kara.” she tried again, more firmly. 

“It just seems like everyone’s friendly at game night or when you need some piece of L-Corp tech, but I’m the only one who has her back! And after all she’s gone through with her family lately, the last thing she needs is Agent Danvers and the DEO rolling up to her front door just in time to make the morning news—” 

“Kara!!” 

“What?!” 

“No one’s blaming this on Lena right now. All we know for certain is that the signal is coming from L-Corp. Thousands of people work there.” 

Kara huffed at her, annoyed. That part she couldn’t really argue with. 

“Well it’s definitely not Lena.” If Kara couldn’t win the argument with Alex outright, she could at least get the last word in. 

*** 

Kara, suffering slightly from lack of sleep, was having flashbacks as she entered the CatCo lobby the next morning. All this time and progress, and here she was, once again, having been arm-twisted into surreptitiously determining whether Lena Luthor, her best friend, the person for whom Kara had recently been steadfastly ignoring an ever-strengthening crush, had maybe perhaps turned evil for realsies this time. Alex and J’onn were just the worst sometimes. _Maybe I’m the worst too. I mean, I’m the one who’s actually doing it._

She reached the editorial floor and headed towards Lena’s office. When Lena saw her through the glass, her face lit up, and she waved. Kara couldn’t help but join her in a smile. Their gazes locked for long enough to just push the bounds of professionalism. 

“Ponytail!” 

Kara grimaced and gave Lena an apologetic look. She turned to find Snapper stomping in her direction, with his glower set to full blast. 

“Your number one source faceplanted in the park last night and got rescued by some of her little commando buddies. Any word from her about that?” He didn’t pause for an answer. “Five hundred words, on my desk by end of day. With quotes if you think you can find time in the day for your actual job. I’m hearing it’s going to be five weeks to fix the turf. The pee-wee soccer parents are threatening to recall the city council if it takes more than two.” 

Kara winced at that. Sometimes even the best heroing intentions didn’t quite pan out as intended. Supergirl might need to show up at a fundraiser… 

Snapper was still ranting when rescue came from a familiar source. 

“Miss Danvers, a word in my office?” Lena was leaning against the door jamb. Snapper grumbled, but couldn’t actually argue. 

“Get. The. Exclusive.” With that, Snapper stomped off, presumably to find another reporter to harangue. 

*** 

“You looked like you needed saving,” Lena laughed as she closed the door behind them. “Have you even had your coffee yet?” 

Truth be told, Kara had already consumed a six-egg omelet, three coffees that were mostly sugar and cream, and eight pastries (from five different bakeries to keep suspicions down — being Cat’s assistant had provided a much better cover story for outrageous pastry purchases than journalism did). 

“I have, but I need another one after that ambush!” 

“Just say the word and I’ll reassign him to the mail room,” Lena offered, eyes twinkling as she headed to the coffee station to pour Kara a cup. 

“No you won’t.” 

“No, but that doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy thinking about it. Here’s your utterly revolting cup of cream and sugar with a dash of coffee for flavor.” 

Kara took her beverage and settled on the couch. Lena’s expression shifted from levity to concern as she joined her. “_Have_ you heard anything from Supergirl though? I saw the news report and it seemed quite concerning. Someone caught the whole thing on video from their apartment balcony.” 

_Oh great, Alex must be freaking thrilled_. “No, uh, nope. Haven’t heard anything.” Lying to Lena was sure getting old. If everything worked out with this, Alex and J’onn were going to owe her, and she was definitely going to talk them into letting her tell Lena this time. “How bad’s the video? I haven’t seen it yet.” 

“It looked pretty bad, really.” Lena scanned Kara up and down with a hesitant concern that Kara was not prepared to analyze. She wasn’t prepared for Lena’s followup remark either. “And then someone made an edit with Supergirl crashing into bowling pins, and it went viral on Twitter.” 

Kara stared at her, not sure how to react to that one. _Alex is probably tearing some tech analyst a new you-know-what trying to make them shut down the entire Internet. I sure hope there isn’t a hashtag…_ Maybe a subject change was the best plan here. She cleared her throat. 

“So what have you been up to lately?” Kara asked, feeling like the worst friend who had ever betrayed a best friend at her other friends’ classified insistence on the basis of national security. “You have that ‘I just cracked a tricky problem and I’m going to make another billion dollars’ glow going on.” 

Lena blushed a little and moved closer. “You know me too well. And it might be ten billion this time.” She winked, and Kara’s brain went slightly on the fritz. 

After a moment too long, Kara cleared her throat. “Anything you can tell me about off the record?” The timing of this discovery seemed suspicious, but Lena was being so _friendly_. More than friendly if Kara thought about it too hard, but she wasn’t ready to cross that bridge. 

“Not quite yet,” Lena laughed. “That would jinx it.” She bit her lip, and stared at Kara, like she was trying to make a decision. “OK, fine. A _tidbit_. I was reviewing some old code repositories, and someone may have made a revolutionary leap in data processing without realizing they’d done it. And that’s all I’m going to say.” 

“Ooh, daaaaaaata processing!” Kara couldn’t help but tease. “That’s totally sexy. You’re guaranteed to win Innovator of the Year for that one. Magazine art departments definitely won’t threaten to resign en masse rather than come up with a design for that cover!” 

“Kara Danvers, data processing dictates your life and you know it. Next time you’re wasting a Saturday afternoon on the couch scarfing down takeout and binge-watching reality shows on streaming, and the video quality goes to shit, don’t come crying to me wishing that the femtosecond was the new picosecond!” 

Kara laughed. “I’m just saying, I hope you like halfhearted greenscreen photoshoots where the art department intern slaps a bunch of 1’s and 0’s behind you in post and calls it a day.” 

Lena rose from the couch and walked back to her desk. “Oh, drink your coffee and get out of here, you philistine. I have a conference call in ten minutes and you have to get five hundred words with quotes from irate soccer moms by EOD.” 

Kara grimaced. “Don’t remind me!” _How dangerous could some dumb data processing algorithm be?_

*** 

The upside of writing an article about something that had outraged an entire league’s worth of soccer parents was that there was no shortage of quotes. Printable ones, however, were thinner on the ground. 

It was slightly mortifying writing an article when her own alter ego’s antics had caused the problem in the first place, but it wasn’t the first time. _Probably won’t be the last either._ A quick text to Alex and she had a quote assuring the public as to Supergirl’s health. She didn’t want to quote Supergirl directly until there was a fundraiser to promote. Snapper would live. 

Obligations met for the moment, she headed off to Noonan’s to grab lunch. 

*** 

Back at the DEO, tech analysts had been working through the night and into the next day tracking the guerrilla operatives from the previous night. Hours of enhancing grainy video feeds and cell phone ping analysis had borne fruitful results. Now they knew exactly where the group was holed up, in a half-finished warehouse-to-loft conversion. 

Over the next three hours, covert agents were moved into place one by one, preparing to stage a raid. 

Alex was running the operation from a nearby van. “Teams, report in. Tactical Assault?” 

“We’re a go to breach the door.” 

“Containment?” 

“Ready to immobilize and transport the suspects. We’re a go.” 

“Medical?” 

“We’re a go.” 

“Agent Schott?” 

“Security feeds are looped. Ready to cut building power at breach. Tech is a go.” 

“Tactical Assault, you are authorized to commence the operation on your go-ahead.” 

“Copy that. We are a go on my count. Three… Two… One…” 

The door was kicked in, smoke grenades were thrown, and with a minimum of DEO injuries, the seven Cadmus agents were taken into custody. 

“Great job, everyone,” Alex congratulated the team. “Let’s get those guys off to interrogation ASAP.” 

*** 

When Alex contacted her over the DEO comms, Kara set her article to automatically email to Snapper at ten minutes before the deadline and headed to HQ. 

She stopped in her tracks when she saw the look on Alex’s face. Winn was positively ashen. 

“What happened?” Kara demanded. 

“Supergirl,” Alex began, then hesitated. She looked around the crowded room and pulled Kara into a side room for privacy. 

Kara felt panic rising. “What is it, Alex? Did something happen to Eliza?” 

“No, Kara, nothing like that.” Alex took a breath. She was holding her tablet close to her chest. “We tracked down the Cadmus operatives and raided their nest.” 

“Well that’s good news! Isn’t it?” 

“We found several of the handheld devices they were using to trigger the attacks on you last night, and the analysts were able to get a much more thorough understanding of the mechanism by which they work. Winn has a backdoor into L-Corp systems. He was doing an analysis of network traffic to the antenna array to figure out who was sending those signals. The analyzer was running during that last fight and—” 

She cut off and showed Kara the log file from the tablet. “He captured the command and traced it back to the terminal from which it was initiated. And well, when he checked who was logged in to that terminal and running the process…” 

Kara was staring at the screen, where “LeLuthor” was highlighted. Her eyes went glassy. 

“It can’t be her, Alex! Someone must have stolen her credentials.” 

“Winn looked into that, Kara. She has four layers of authentication on her login, plus fingerprint and retinal scans to even get into the laboratory where this terminal is. It all checks out. And just to be sure, he hacked into the security feeds.” 

She closed out the log file and launched a video on the tablet. There, clear as day, was Lena Luthor triggering the signal transmission. 

Kara stared at the screen. 

“Kara, it uh, it gets worse. Winn decrypted some of her recent personal files, from around the time of Lex’s demise.” Alex paused and gave Kara a worried look. “She knows, Kara.” 

“She knows what?” 

“She _knows_. Lex told her that Supergirl is Kara Danvers. As he was _dying_, after she _shot_ him.” 

Kara froze, and looked at her sister for a long moment. 

“Well, heck,” she finally said. 

**** 


	4. Throwdown at the Showdown

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The DEO digs into Lena Luthor's involvement in the attacks, Agent Vasquez has a bad day, and Winn is a cleverpants.

Further confirmation of Lena’s involvement in the plot came from an unlikely source — the archived front page of a gossip blog. 

Now that all of the Cadmus operatives had been captured, Winn could dig more thoroughly into their recent whereabouts. His crawler had matched one of them to a photo of Lena and an unidentified man enjoying lunch two weeks prior. The tabloid’s lurid headline suggested a romantic dalliance. 

If the photo hadn’t been suspicious enough, L-Corp’s lawyers had used all their legal firepower to get the posting removed less than three hours after it went up. Lena usually ignored gossip; why was this story worth going to that much effort? 

Unfortunately, they still didn’t have much in the way of details. The prisoners weren’t talking and weren’t likely to start any time soon. 

*** 

If the prisoners weren’t going to talk, the DEO had a fallback option: surveillance. 

That proved difficult as well; the security around both L-Corp and Lena’s residence was nearly government-grade. And Lena’s past assistance to the DEO made it impossible to know which faces she might recognize. “Just make ‘em wear glasses and a ponytail,” Winn had joked. 

They’d even considered renting hotel rooms in buildings with line-of-sight to L-Corp, but Winn had cautioned them against it. 

“They monitor all those windows,” Winn had warned. “Anyone over there with binoculars or a telescope is going to trigger an alert. Even just staring out the window too long will do it. They’re worried primarily about gunshots, and secondarily about corporate espionage. They have off-the-books agreements with the building managers and can basically storm the place if they need to. We’ve been going through security logs and there was a big legal hullabaloo a year and a half ago when another company stole trade secrets that way.” 

In the end, they’d had to minimize on-site surveillance. 

“If Lena Luthor isn’t the villain here, we’re bringing her on as a fucking DEO security consultant,” Alex muttered as she crossed the suggestion out on the briefing room whiteboard. Winn nodded in agreement. 

*** 

The only reliable human surveillance they could get inside CatCo or L-Corp was Kara. 

_I am not the worst friend in the world! I am not the worst friend in the world!_ she chanted to herself as she rode the L-Corp elevator up to the executive floor. Sure, maybe Lena had found out from her lunatic brother that her best friend was a rotten, deceptive, lying Kryptonian, and sure, she hadn’t breathed a word of it, but there had to be a reasonable explanation. 

She entered the waiting area outside Lena’s office. “Hey, Jess, is Lena free?” 

Jess smiled at the familiar face. “Hi, Kara! She’s been working furiously on some mystery project all morning! Is that lunch? If so, she’s definitely free — unless someone else feeds her, she’s going to starve.” 

“Great! Here, I brought you a sandwich too.” She handed it over. As a former assistant, she knew the importance of keeping the assistant’s favor. 

“Thanks, Kara, that’s so thoughtful!” Jess gushed. 

“Of course!” 

Kara knocked on the door before cracking it open and leaning into the office. 

“Hey, Lena, any chance I could tempt you with lunch? I got that terrible salad you love!” 

Lena stood up from behind her double monitors. “Kara! It’s so good to see you! And the salad is _healthy_. I hope you got one for yourself as well.” 

“You know full well that I did not.” The familiar banter calmed Kara’s nerves a bit. “Long night? I see you’re wearing your glasses.” 

Lena came around the desk, sat on the couch, and accepted her salad. “My contacts gave out around 4AM, yes. I was so relieved when it was you at the door; I hate people seeing me in these…” She adjusted the thick frames self-consciously. 

“You’ve got nothing to worry about,” Kara laughed. “They’re cute!” 

“Oh are they now?” Lena could go from zero to flirtatious on a dime. 

Now Kara was the self-conscious one. “So what’s had you awake at all hours? Still working on your data entry revolution?” 

“Data _processing_, and I know you know that, Kara Danvers, so don’t start. And yes.” 

“I still don’t see why you think that’s so exciting.” 

Lena fixed her with an unreadable look. “Believe me, when this project goes live, it’ll knock your socks off.” 

_Yeesh, that sounds… less unsuspicious than I’d hoped._

*** 

There was one close call that could have ended in disaster. 

“My goodness, Agent Vasquez, is that you?” Out of nowhere, Lena Luthor had appeared next to her car window, leaning over slightly and lowering her sunglasses to make eye contact. 

Vasquez was in plainclothes, and a nondescript vehicle, but somehow Lena had recognized her. She was stationed a block and a half away from L-Corp, and was planning to strangle whoever had failed to warn her that the target was headed her way. 

“Oh, uh, Miss Luthor!” She struggled for an explanation briefly, but life at the DEO tended to make one quick on one’s feet. “Sorry, I just didn’t expect to run into you. I’m here for a coffee meeting with one of your employees. There was a job posting…” The safest bet was to play off her caught-surveilling nerves as caught-job-hunting ones. Hopefully Lena wouldn’t ask about anything inconvenient like _names_. 

“Well, you go ahead and do your detective work, but if you decide you’re interested, let me know, and I’ll put in a word. After all, I know the boss.” Lena Luthor, increasingly probable criminal mastermind, then proceeded to wink. 

“Oh, uh, thanks! And if you don’t mind—” 

“Oh, don’t worry! Not a word to Agent Danvers from me. I don’t want to be accused of poaching. But you know we corporate plunderers like nothing better than luring a faithful public servant over to the dark side. Well, I shouldn't keep you. Good luck!” 

With that, Lena raised her sunglasses and headed off down the sidewalk. Vasquez wasn’t sure what to make of _any_ of it. Especially the wink. 

*** 

Winn burst into the DEO briefing room, clutching a tablet under his arm. “Agent Danvers, we’ve figured out how to work around L-Corp’s security.” 

He’d taken a calculated gamble. Alex was _not_ a fan of interruptions, but she also wasn’t a fan of delivering an entire briefing presentation that had been rendered out of date, so this one seemed worth the risk. 

“Alright, Agent Schott, walk us through it.” She offered him the podium. 

“Ok, hang on..” He fiddled with the tablet. “Got it!” His tablet was now projected on the briefing room’s main screen. He launched a file showing a schematic of the L-Corp security systems. 

“This is a live view of what we’re dealing with. We’d previously penetrated the system and were able to _read_ information without detection, but this stuff is next-level. You start modifying anything and the rationalization subroutines notice that something’s out of whack within milliseconds. And there are all kinds of checksums built in! They even vary the color temperature of the lights throughout the day so that they can crosscheck the expected color against a set of sensors in each hallway, and then both of those against the shifting hue of the video feeds. Mess with any single element and a team is dispatched ASAP. 

“And that’s just one example! We’ve observed random drills on this stuff, and their security command room displays the metrics on a leaderboard; it’s the number one thing they’re held accountable to. When Lena Luthor is bored, she’s been known to mess with a sensor and wait there with a stopwatch. You’d have to be a genius to mess with this without setting off alarms across the system.” 

“So how exactly do we get in there, Agent Schott? This doesn’t sound promising so far,” Alex asked. 

“Lucky for you, I happen to be a _bit_ of a genius.” 

*** 

Kara was dutifully watching the operation from DEO HQ. She had tried to talk Alex and J’onn into letting her come along, but between her emotional involvement and her powers still being on the blink, it was fruitless. Alex had wanted her totally off the raid, but Kara had insisted that she needed to be there to make sure Lena wasn’t secreted off to some dank hole in a DEO sub-basement, no matter what she turned out to be up to. J’onn had finally settled the matter by deciding that she could follow along from the control room. 

If she was honest with herself, she was glad not to have to be there for this one, in case things went ugly. 

Kara fiddled with the edges of her cape. “Ugh, I know I have to wear the suit if I’m onsite, but I feel silly when I don’t have the powers to go with it.” She flexed a pencil experimentally, but her superstrength remained stubbornly offline. 

“Are you criticizing my sartorial talents?” Winn asked distractedly. He keyed the microphone. “Tech team confirming L-Corp security systems are bypassed. One guard is on patrol near the executive floors; another two are in the lobby. The rest are three floors away, keeping an eye on things via the monitors. We’re estimating you’ll have about 90 seconds between blowing the door open and their arrival. Target is in the far left corner of the room, focused on the computer terminal.” 

“I’m just saying that while it’s great for superheroing, it’s a little awkward when I have to take a taxi here and change into the suit in an alley at human speed is all.” 

“Fair enough,” he conceded. 

“I mean, have you ever tried to surreptitiously _put tights on in an alley?_” 

“Can’t say that I have, Supergirl.” 

Alex’s voice came over the comms. “Special Tactics, you have go-ahead to breach the door. Hold off entering the lab until we can see what’s in there though.” 

The DEO Special Tactics squad leader silently signaled a countdown. An explosives expert triggered the charges on the lab’s security door. The blast reverberated throughout the building, and the hallway filled with dust and smoke. The lights flickered twice before cutting out completely. After a second the red emergency lighting finally came on. 

From where the door had once been, there came a coughing sound. As visibility returned, Lena Luthor appeared in the doorway hands raised, wearing thick glasses, joggers, and an old MIT hoodie, covered in dust and drywall, and looking slightly stunned. A dozen automatic weapons were trained on her. 

“Um,” she looked around quizzically, “what exactly brings the DEO to my doorstep at 2AM?” 

*** 

Lena had been led to a DEO interrogation room and left to stew for a couple hours. 

Her security team was in an absolute panic, but the DEO had her off the premises and secured before they could intervene. Winn was keeping an eye on things in case the CEO’s disappearance inspired any co-conspirators to act, but nothing suspicious had occurred so far. The laboratory from which the attacks were launched was cordoned off by L-Corp security; in fact, that entire floor was locked down. 

A recently-transferred DEO agent was sent in to do the initial interrogation. They wanted to start Lena with an unfamiliar face. After 90 minutes of Lena insisting she had no idea what they were talking about, the agent emerged. 

Twenty minutes later, Alex “Good Cop” Danvers entered the room with a breakfast sandwich and a large coffee. 

“Hey, Lena. Sorry about all this.” 

“Alex, thank god!” Lena exclaimed. “What the fuck am I doing here? It’s been vague questions over and over and no one will tell me anything.” 

“Watch the coffee; it’s hot.” 

“Oh, _now_ the DEO cares about my safety.” Lena rolled her eyes. 

Alex waited for Lena to scarf down half the sandwich. “So, we do have a problem.” 

“And if you’d tell me what it is, I’ll bet we could get it solved faster.” 

“I assume you saw the news reports about Supergirl’s crash the other day.” 

“I assume the DEO is well-aware that L-Corp is the headline sponsor of the soccer field fundraiser this weekend, and they don’t lay out that kind of money without the CEO’s ink on the signature line,” Lena shot back. 

“She was knocked out of the sky by some kind of novel energy weapon. It’s like nothing we’ve encountered before.” 

Lena looked curious, but didn’t otherwise react to this information. 

“It’s actually the third time she’s been hit. The other two incidents didn’t make the news.” 

Now Lena looked concerned. “Is she OK?” 

“She will be.” 

Lena only looked more concerned at that, but shook her head and returned her focus to the matter at hand. 

“I still don’t understand what precisely warranted sending a DEO extraction team to spirit me off to your very expensive dungeon in the middle of the goddamned night. Supergirl gets hit and your first suspect is the closest Luthor? I thought we were several years past that, but I guess a Luthor can never be 100% trusted.” 

“We found a signal propagation network hidden away around the city. It was relaying and amplifying the main transmission.” 

“So there was a single transmission point,” Lena surmised. “Why not trace the signal back to its source and raid them?” She took a sip of the coffee. 

“We did trace it back.” Alex waited for a reaction, but all Lena did was wave at her to continue. “The signal was coming from the L-Corp antenna.” 

Lena froze, with the coffee cup lowered halfway to the table. After a long moment, recognition flashed across her face. 

“Ohhhh shit.” Lena’s eyes went wide. 

**** 


	5. Explications and Revelations

Several hours of questioning later, Kara and Lena were tucking into a takeout brunch in Kara’s apartment. 

“I am so, so sorry, for all this mess, Kara,” Lena apologized. “It should have occurred to me that Lex would leave a few last booby traps around on L-Corp servers.” She prodded disgustedly at her pancakes, as though they bore partial responsibility for recent events. “Lex knew that 50,000 lines of code about high-bandwidth signal multiplexing is exactly the sort of thing I would compile first and ask questions about later. All I thought about was how much profit L-Corp could make leapfrogging past 5G cell standards, and I didn’t even consider that maybe—” 

“Lena…” 

“—and of course, when it sent data off to the L-Corp antenna array, there was a security alert. Guess what I did? I fucking _overrode it_ because _of course_ the revolutionary signal multiplexer expects to talk to the antenna. God, if anyone else had instructed the data security team to open up the firewall like that, they’d be cleaning out their desk—” Lena was on a roll now, and her breakfast was being stabbed to within an inch of its life. 

“No, Lena, _I’m_ sorry,” Kara interrupted. Lena continued staring at the ruins at her pancakes. “Hey, really.” She slowly moved her hand over Lena’s. “I mean it. The second they discovered it was coming from L-Corp, I knew I should come talk to you about it, but…” She paused. At that, Lena finally made eye contact. 

“But what, Kara?” 

Confessions were tumbling out of her at this point. “Things were just moving so fast. The DEO traced the devices back to L-Corp, and the next thing I knew, Winn had traced them to your specific computer terminal, and then he, uh,” she paused realizing the next part might require some degree of delicacy. 

“He found a video, Lena. Of Lex. Of your brother.” Now Kara was the one avoiding eye contact. “Telling you something that I should have told you. Years ago. I should have told you years ago.” 

Tears welled up, and Kara swiped angrily at her eyes. 

_“Years_ ago. After the Medusa virus. I should have told you then.” 

She finally looked up. Lena was staring at her wide-eyed, clutching her hand so hard that if Kara were human she would have been in serious pain. Kara took a deep breath and summoned all of her courage. “I _know_ you already know, but I still need to tell you. I’m Supergirl, and I’ve been lying to you this whole time.” 

Lena was still just staring at her, motionless and stunned. 

“And I’m so sorry,” Kara tried to continue, before bursting into tears. 

The tears finally shook Lena from her frozen state. She tumbled off her stool and wrapped Kara in her arms. “Kara, it’s OK. I promise, it’s OK.” 

“It’s not OK,” Kara disagreed, her voice muffled in Lena’s shoulder. “Not at all. You must hate me. You have every right to hate me.” 

Lena paused. “Kara, I don’t hate you.” 

“Well, maybe you should,” came the quiet response. 

“Kara, Lex may have confirmed it, but it wasn’t entirely a surprise.” 

“What do you mean?” 

Lena bit her lip and went quiet for a moment, obviously considering her next words carefully. She trailed a hand through Kara’s blonde locks. 

“Well, you ‘flew to my office on a bus.’ Like, the second or third time I met you. And practically five minutes after Supergirl saved me from a helicopter crash.” 

There was a long pause. 

“I thought you missed that,” Kara finally said. She sounded mildly embarrassed. _That’s good,_ Lena thought, _embarrassed is a step up from distraught, right? _ She could feel Kara begin to relax. “And it wasn’t five minutes, it was entire _days_ later.” Kara paused again. “So you really don’t hate me?” 

“No, Kara, I don’t hate you. Not one iota. Though I will be having a stern word with Mr. Schott about computer trespass and Fourth Amendment rights in the near future.” Kara had finally calmed down enough that Lena felt safe to loosen her grip without worrying that the other woman might flee the apartment. She stroked Kara’s cheek, and Kara leaned into her palm, soaking up the affection. 

It may have been the touch, or the close, intense eye contact. Maybe it was both, plus the emotional catharsis, plus the lack of sleep, plus the concussive effects of a surprise explosion at the doorway of her secure private laboratory. Or maybe it was just something in Lena’s subconscious deciding that one confession deserved another, and that a superhero identity wasn’t the only secret that had been left unspoken for too long. 

Whatever the cause, Lena found herself bringing her other hand to Kara’s face and blurting out, “I could never hate you, darling. I’ve been in lov—” 

Lena’s eyes widened in horror at what she had revealed. The analytical part of her brain had caught up with her mouth, and was terrified she’d put more strain on their still-tenuous friendship than it would be able to bear. 

But Kara’s eyes softened and begin to refill with tears. She leaned her forehead against Lena’s and took a shuddering breath. 

“Me too, Lena. I love you too.” 

Kara then closed the distance between them. 

** _One month later…_ **

“C’mon, Supergirl, let’s get a move on!” 

Lena swatted Kara on the butt, eliciting a squawk. She enjoyed the new facets of their relationship, but they still caught her by surprise on occasion. 

“All right, all right. Hold your horses, handsy.” She twitched her cape into place. 

“L-Corp ponied up a big pile of money to get that soccer field back into shape, and the least Supergirl can do is make it to the season championship award ceremony on time. Don’t want to break the hearts of all those first-graders, do you?” 

“Never!” Kara was appalled at the very suggestion. “OK, I’m ready. Off we go?” She gestured to the balcony. Lena led the way outside, and let Kara swoop her up into the sky. 

“I have to say, this mode of travel is a lot more pleasant when we aren’t doing it in the course of you saving my life just in the nick of time.” 

“For me too, Lena. Me too.” Kara agreed. 

*** 

“Thank you all for being here on this beautiful day,” Lena began as the applause died down. “We’re pleased to see everyone enjoying the field, and I hope you’ve been enjoying the free refreshments as well.” The audience laughed in appreciation. “L-Corp would like to offer its congratulations to today’s champions, and to all the teams who competed in the league this year. And now, without further ado, I would like to introduce Supergirl!” 

Lena stepped back from the microphone, clapping as Kara landed on the stage with a flourish. They’d rehearsed the timing on this part for an hour the night before and had clearly nailed it. Awed faces stared at her from the crowd. 

“Thank you for the introduction, Miss Luthor,” Supergirl began. 

*** 

Still in her Supergirl duds, Kara intercepted Lena after the ceremony concluded, as she was about to depart with her driver. 

“Noonan’s in fifteen minutes for a late lunch, right?” she confirmed. 

“Second lunch for you, but yes, that’s still the plan.” Lena’s eyes twinkled but she left a safe distance between them and kept her hands to herself. There were a lot of cameras around. “Wear the blue buttondown? The one that’s a little snug around the biceps?” 

“Will do.” Kara gave her the ghost of a wink. 

She cleared her throat and stepped back slightly. “Well Miss Luthor,” she said in a louder and more formal voice. “Thank you for inviting me to this celebration.” 

“Of course, Supergirl. We’re grateful you were able to attend.” 

Kara winked again and shot off into the sky. 


End file.
